Reacción a "Reactions: sales of antibiotics for animal use have fallen by almost 50 % in the last ten years"

Antibiotic sales in food-producing animals have been reduced by 50% between 2011 and 2021 in Europe, and sales of critically important antibiotics in human medicine have also been reduced. This is good news, and we should all congratulate ourselves for this, especially the European authorities and national agencies, in Spain the AEMPS with its National Antibiotic Resistance Plan (PRAN), for this unprecedented success.

However, we must not forget that antibiotic resistance is the biggest health threat we face today. Global antibiotic consumption has increased by 70% between 2000-2015 in developing countries, where the control of antibiotic consumption and procurement is negligible. This year we have learned that direct deaths of patients who do not respond to any antibiotic treatment are not 700,000 patients/year, as estimated, but 1.2 million/year worldwide. Moreover, the current data do not include the covid-19 years.

We know that, in the world and in Europe, this pandemic has increased the levels of resistance to antibiotics of last resort, and has accelerated the generation of pan-resistant bacteria, resistant to all antibiotics available in practice in our hospitals. The WHO is developing a list of critical antibiotics for humans, which aims to help countries focus their efforts on the antibiotics most relevant to our health.